Why we should all care about the SANDAG scandal

This is a refrain many of us have heard over the last few months especially when it comes to the myriad scandals coming out of Washington. Maybe it’s the result of a general acceptance of the notion that all politicians are corrupt in some way. Perhaps it’s just blind partisanship; the idea that we’re much more willing to accept the transgressions of a politician if said politician’s values closely align with our own. One person’s what happened with the Russians? is another person’s but her emails!.

And then there’s the recent scandal involving the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). I, for one, didn’t see what the big deal was at first when Voice of San Diego first reported that the organization’s executive leadership possibly misled voters when it came to forecasting the amount of funds that would be generated by Measure A, a 0.5 percent sales tax increase that was on the 2016 ballot.

But the measure was defeated. So why should readers care about the numbers on an economic forecast that doesn’t even affect them?

Well, first, it’s important to point out that the multi-member SANDAG does hold a lot of power. They are the region’s primary planning agency, in charge of a lot of money and with the power to decide important infrastructure and transportation projects. Second, it’s important to understand the scope of the scandal. There are some excellent primers by Sara Libby on the Voice of San Diego website and by Doug Porter on the San Diego Free Press website that I encourage all readers to check out, but here’s the gist: SANDAG, using outdated forecast models, possibly knew that they were off by a billion or so dollars when they were trying to encourage voters to vote yes on Measure A. What started as a rather general inquiry by Voice’s Andrew Keatts about this discrepancy in the economic forecast has blown up into a full-fledged scandal with revelations that multiple executive leaders of SANDAG (including Executive Director Gary Gallegos) instructed employees to begin deleting documents and emails so as to circumvent public records requests.

Make no mistake: This is a smoking gun. One that will likely result in (we hope) resignations by SANDAG’s leadership and a complete overhaul in their economic forecast systems.

Again, it’s easy to be dismissive. Voice investigated the economic forecast, which resulted in an independent investigation, and now we have the results from that. The bad guys seems to have been caught even if the results of that independent investigation found that there was “no intent or deliberate effort” to deceive the voters. So we can all move on, right?

Not exactly.

First, the executive leadership are not yet obligated to step down. They are not under any criminal investigation and only pressure from the region’s mayors and city officials would persuade them to do so. What’s more, according to the investigation Gallegos—a former Caltrans director who was hired to oversee SANDAG in 2001—instructed employees to delete documents using a separate server. As this issue went to press, California State Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher was referring the SANDAG revelations to Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office and asking for a state audit of SANDAG’s reporting practices.

This is only going to get uglier. What’s worse, if there is a state-level audit and SANDAG’s economic forecast models are found to be, indeed, outdated and unreliable and that execs knew that, there will have to be a complete overhaul of SANDAG. That will take a lot of time and energy. Time that could have been spent coming up with tangible solutions to the county’s vast infrastructure and transportation needs.

To think, this could have potentially been avoided if SANDAG execs had just admitted their mistake. It’s likely that everyone would have moved on. By actively trying to cover it up, not only did they ostensibly admit their guilt but showed the entire city that they cannot be forgiven or trusted. Instead, they tried to cover their asses and, as the coming weeks and months should prove, it’s San Diegans who will have to pay the price.